Missouri’s Republican attorney general is maneuvering to block an $11 billion power line that would move renewable energy across the Midwest, urging regulators in the Show Me State to take an unprecedented step of revoking a construction permit issued more than two years ago.
Besides suggesting that the Missouri Public Service Commission revoke a permit for the 780-mile Grain Belt Express line, Attorney General Andrew Bailey demanded that Invenergy — the Chicago-based developer — produce documents to back up claims about the project’s economic benefits.
“I think the project needs to be killed,” Bailey said in an interview. “It doesn’t benefit the people of the state of Missouri. It was sold under false pretenses.”
The challenge is the latest in a series of legal and political efforts by project opponents to kill the Grain Belt Express, which was initially proposed in 2011.